Ensuring Seniors are Safe During the Holidays
By: Shelby Levins
Updated: December 8, 2010
Chapman is encouraging families to help their aging loved ones clear the clutter from their homes – eliminating potential health and safety hazards.
Here are some tips -
1) Gift giving at the holidays adds to the clutter and can cause a safety issue. Older adults who’ve received gifts from family and friends may be reluctant to part with them. Encourage your loved one to give unused gifts back to the giver or grandchildren or donate items. Seniors often fear what will happen if they give up their stuff, like the older adult who saved three generations of bank statements. Use logic and information to help seniors understand it’s O.K. to let go.
2. 2) The beloved prom dress or wedding dress hanging up represents the history and memories of the event; it’s not the dress itself. It also can pose a tripping hazard. Save only a piece of the dress to make a quilt or display in a shadow box. Scrapbooking and converting photos to DVDs are other ways to save treasured keepsakes without all the extra mess.
3. 3) Today’s seniors have more money than any other previous generation of older adults and they love to shop. Clutter can become so bad seniors can’t find things and they repurchase items they already have, contributing to the clutter cycle. Try to convince seniors to cut back and to say “no” to free stuff.
4. 4) Those clothes in the closet don’t fit anymore, but your loved one is sure that some day she’ll lose enough weight to get into them. Ask seniors to fill a box with clothing they don’t wear much and make a list of the items in the box. Agree that if they have not gone back to the box in six months to wear the item, they will donate that to charity.
5.
5) Seniors who have suffered a brain trauma or
stroke, who are wheelchair bound or who are experiencing dementia may no longer
be able to manage household duties, which could contribute to clutter. If you
see a health change, encourage your senior to visit his or her doctor and
consider a professional organizer and caregiver to help your loved one. The
clutter could signal that something is wrong health-wise.
To learn more about Home Instead Senior Care visit their website - http://www.homeinstead.com/home.aspx
